


RUN OUT THE CLOCK

by SEJakes



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alpha Males, Angst, Army, CIA, Confessions, Crimes & Criminals, Dirty Talk, FBI, Gay Male Character, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marines, Original Character(s), Original work - Freeform, Romance, SEJakes, Serial Killers, Thriller, Trauma, bau, hurt comfort, m/m - Freeform, military men, military romance, mm military romance, mm romance, relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 16:22:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SEJakes/pseuds/SEJakes
Summary: What happens when the son of a famous BAU profiler follows in his father’s footsteps, only to be hunted by the son of the serial killer who killed his father...G. Tate is an FBI profiler, a Senior Special Agent at the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia, where he profiles and captures some of the worst serial killer in order to bring them to justice...and to bring the families of their victims some peace.  But when a series of copycat crimes is brought to his doorstep, he becomes involved in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with both a killer, and the son of the man who killed his father.Now Tate has to figure out if those men are really one in the same, or if they're both in more danger than they ever realized.





	1. Chapter 1

The sense of foreboding trailed him all day. Tate had been unable to shake it, and so it’d hung over him like a goddamned cloud. He could practically hear his old Marine CO in his ear, yelling, _“Shake it off, Tate—the enemy isn’t going to wait for you to get your head out of your goddamned ass.”_

Ah, the good old days. The whole memory made Tate smile—briefly—which felt strange, like his facial muscles were out of shape. But how could that be true when, according to that stupid internet meme, it took more facial muscles to frown than to smile?

 _JFC, Tate, get back to work_.

Which meant getting up close and personal with the piles on his desk, something he didn’t mind. It was straightforward, had a beginning and an end and was generally a good palate cleanser. Sometimes it even helped him solve other cases, just by the nature of the rote work taking his mind off everything else and giving it a chance to gel.

He took the coffee one of his team members, another SSA named Donna Bridges, had brought in from Starbucks and went into his office. Every senior agent in the BAU in this building had their own, and the bullpen of cubicles was reserved for the junior agents. He kicked the door so it partially closed and saw the mail scattered along his desk. He sorted through it one-handed, mindlessly, until a particular handwriting on one envelope caught his eye and he stilled.

He hadn’t had what seemed like a second to breathe this week. This month.

This _day._

But now, that date slapped him in the face, similar to the way the smell of death had when he’d walked into the Samuels’ residence turned murder scene earlier that afternoon.

It was August first. He looked around quickly, to see if anyone on his team was looking at him, but they seemed involved in other things. And hell, even if any of them had seen it on his desk, it looked like a normal envelope. They all got letters here, for all kinds of things, some from victims to thank them, some from people who loved serial killers and others, from people who appeared to be serial killers…and yes, some of them were creepy as fuck.

This letter? Fell into the latter category.

Should he open it here? Take it to the privacy of his own home?”

 _Get it over with._ It was going to be exactly the same—it always was—but it would still hurt like a bitch.

 **Dear Jessie—  
(or should I call you Supervisory Special Agent G.Tate of the BAU? )  
Either way, you’ll be getting a present from me shortly, to commemorate our special day. ** **I want to make sure you never forget it.**

At that, Tate froze, because that? _Was_ new.

JP knocked on the half opened door. “Hey, you okay, Tate? You look pale as fuck.”

“Huh?” He pulled himself away from the lines swimming in front of his face. “Yeah. Too much coffee.”

“We’re just going over some new developments in the Samuels’ case, which I’m guessing isn’t going to help your caffeine consumption. We’re meeting in a few.”

“Right. Got it.” He wondered briefly if the Samuels’ case could possibly be the present the letter referred to and promptly dismissed it. Those murders had taken place two days earlier and had just been discovered, and there was nothing about the scene that was a callback to the “special day” the letter reference.With dread, he put the letter back into the envelope, slid it into an evidence bag surreptitiously and shoved it into the notebook he carried with him to take notes on the cases.

_Just like your father._

He loved the computer and the internet, but nothing felt as good as paper and pen in order to hash out his initial thoughts. It was comforting. Familiar. Made him feel like his dad was right there with him.

From his office, he could see the team beginning to gather around the table across from the bullpen. Will Harris, aka C8 was their resident tech genius, aka former hacker, and along with JP, Donna, Jude and Harrison and himself, they made up an elite BAU team.They worked well together, with Jude being the newest member, joining the team last year. Tate and C8 had come in together, and both had been there for four years.

As he observed paperwork shuffling and the computers firing up, Tate’s mind continued to race in the safety of his office. He had to call the marshals office about the letter and the breaching in his identity. He’d kept in touch with them, but hell, he worked for the FBI under an assumed identity. How much more insulated could he be? It wasn’t like he was seventeen and in need of constant protection…but obviously, his insulation had been a few layers too short.

But for now, all he needed to do was work the goddamned case. It was what his father always said he was doing when Tate would sneak downstairs at 3AM, sometimes the only time he’d catch his father at home.

“What’re you doing, dad?”

And Gavin would smile up at him. “Working the case, Jessie. Working the case.”

G. Tate was his newest identity and the fake name was essential to prevent a slew of copycat killers looking for attention from the son of a legendary BAU profiler…one who died at the hands of the serial killer he’d profiled for ten years…most of Tate’s life up until that point.

His father had been killed when Tate was just seventeen. The next year, he left the house he’d grown up in and enlisted in the Army. From there, he served for six years—an elite Force Recon Team and was then targeted by the FBI. Because he couldn’t shake the idea that he needed to be out there, helping. Searching, for the serial killer who’d never been caught, but who’d gone inactive after his father’s death.

So after years in the Marines and then the FBI, Tate had picked yet another innocuous name and hoped for the best. That’s what he’d done and what his father had done for him before that, with hopes of distancing him from a killer.

But now, someone knew who he was and where he worked—the same someone who sent him a letter every single year on August first, the date of his father’s murder. Staying quiet about it it kept the media and thrill seekers and wanna-be amateur profilers away, but if his team didn’t know, could he help them? Could they protect him? Because he wasn’t dumb enough to think he didn’t need protection.

Now, probably more than ever.  He opened the door and caught Donna's eye--held up a hand, which meant, "I need five."  She nodded and he closed the door and checked his phone and realized he'd definitely have to cancel on driving out to see Dom late that night. It’d been four months since he’d seen the man, and Dom would understand, even on a day like today.

He’d also be worried as hell, and Tate couldn’t hide this from him.

Dom was Dominic Geddes, a former BAU original, was now a hermit, both by choice and by necessity. He was older than Tate’s dad would’ve been now, and he was probably the closest thing to family Tate had left.

“I’ve got to break our date,” Tate told him when Dom picked up.

“Work?” Dom asked.

“Not exactly.”

Dom paused, like he was assessing how bad things were. Sometimes, Tate swore he was psychic but in reality, he was just really good at reading people. A natural profiler. “Tate, tell me what’s going on?”

He didn’t bother to try to hide it, told him about the second letter, the use of the last name…the “you’ll get my present soon,” threat…because he wasn’t under any illusions as to what that meant.

On the other end of the phone, Dom sighed. “Copycat?”

“How can it be anything else?”

“Ah, J…" Because he was the only one who called Tate by his nickname, J.  "I know you want it to be anything else, but we can’t rule Gulles out. And no present?”

“No.” He’d learned early on to never add “yet” to a sentence like that because why tempt the fates? “But I’m not bringing this shit to your door.”

“Can’t let it run your life, son,” Dom intoned, then snorted. “Said the man holed up in the woods.”

“I think you went there to escape stupid new profiler questions.” But they both know that wasn’t why at all, that no one escaped the BAU unscathed.

“What are you thinking, Tate?”

“I need to search for Gulles’s son.”

“You and I both know that the chances of his son being a killer are slim…we would’ve seen evidence by now.”

“Maybe we have and we don’t know it,” Tate reasoned. He’d known about Gulles’s son for a long time, probably one of the few who did, since it was never let out to the press. Only a select few profilers and marshals knew, besides Tate himself, and only because of his father’s notes. “I guess I need to tell the team...about this and about me.”

“Are you asking or telling?”

As much as Tate wanted to leave the chore up to someone else, he couldn’t. He'd always taken control of his own life, refusing to live it the way a potential monster wanted him to. His father hadn’t, and Tate wouldn’t dishonor him by hiding. So for the moment, he said goodbye to Dom and went out into the bullpen, sat at the oval table and made sure that the only thing on his mind was the Samuels' case.  He profiled with his team, went over fresh evidence and two hours later, he was back to the fact that it was August first.

He owed a call to the Marshals, specifically Kevin Johnstone who was in charge of his case from the start. If Tate was coming out to his team, it wouldn’t negate protection but it was important for them to do a security clearance on top of the one the FBI had already done on them. But first, he had one search he could attempt…with a little help from a hacker.

Tate wound his way through the BAU’s maze until he came to the hallway that brought him to C8's door.  His office was affectionately called "the cave" and it was definitely a different world inside their cyber expert’s door. Tate knocked but opened the door without waiting, because the man sitting behind the plethora of screens was wearing ear buds and listening to ear splitting metal.

Still, the twenty-four year old hacker nicknamed C8—real name Will Harris— turned his head to acknowledge him and yelled, “What’s up? Forget something?”

“No--this is about another case.  I need you to run something for me.”

C8 pulled an earbud out of this ear. “Hit me.”

“This is between us.  It's a search for this man’s biological son.”

C8 nodded as he perused the file Tate handed him, and if he recognized Gulles’s name, he didn’t flinch. Because they worked with killers on the daily.

“Right away chief.” C8 was back in his own world of loud music and the dark web, a horrifying place that most people lived their entire lives not knowing about.

Tate had wanted to run his own search, but the shit he’d see? Too many memories and they were already crowding his skull. Instead, he sat in one of the many chairs along the walls of the dark cave C8 called home and he waited, semi-patiently, watching C8’s fingers fly across the screen.

“I got a hit. Might be above my pay grade,” C8 yelled, then took out his earbud.

“I didn’t think that was possible.”

C8 smiled. “I didn’t say I couldn’t do it. I'll just have to take extra time to ensure there wouldn’t be consequences.” He showed Tate the screen that showed his search had bumped into a highly classified file.

It could be because the person was in WITSEC. But usually, it wouldn’t require this level of security clearance…just a call to the marshals to check.

Well hell, he had to call Kevin anyway anyway. “You know what—let’s save your illegal activities when I don’t have another source.”

C8 shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Tate left C8’s domain and went back into his own, closed the door and called his marshal, the man who’d given him cover from the age of seventeen, and the first person besides Dom who Tate had seen after he’d learned about his father’s death.

“Haven’t heard from you in forever,” Kevin boomed, then paused. “Ah, shit, this isn’t good, is it?”

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I’ve been made.”

“By who?”

“I think it’s a copycat killer. Of Gulles.”

“Okay, we’ve got to get you moving—“

“Wait, what? No, Kevin, I’m not moving. I’ll deal with the consequences. Right now, it’s only one person who seems to know, and he hasn’t given any indication that he’s going to the press.”

“It’s the psycho who writes you every year, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. And I just want to rule someone out. But it’s going to take a favor.”

Kevin sighed.  Loudly. “Go ahead.”

“Remember how we came across Gulles’ son in my dad’s research? I ran his name and bumped up against classified files.”

“You think that’s who’s sending these?”

“I’m hoping to rule it out but..."

“So what—it’s the son’s time to get to work?” Kevin sounded disgusted. “I’ll see what I can free up. Give me at least twenty-four hours.”

Twenty-four hours was a fucking lifetime, and Tate figured he'd already lived his share of those.  How badly could waiting out one more hurt?

 


	2. Chapter 2

Two hours earlier, Tate'd been profiling a man who liked to strangle his victims before fucking them. Now, after a long, hot shower, he was in a gay club, with pounding music and sex in the back rooms, in order to forget.

For a little while, at least.

He understood that there were aspects of his job that stayed with him. Changed him. Every job had that potential, but working as a profiler for the BAU was the type of job that could turn someone's life into a walking nightmare…and, at the very least, give them to you.

Tonight was his attempt to stay off the clock, and to avoid thinking about his inability to escape.

He ordered a whiskey neat from Bolt--owner, bartender and friend. On the surface, he and Bolt appeared to be polar opposites, but in reality, they were both Marines, both Force Recon. Tate just remained slightly more buttoned-up, his hair not military short but definitely clean cut while Bolt’s hair was in a ponytail, and he sported a goatee as well.

“Long day?” Bolt was also covered in tattoos up to his neck, and his nose, lip and eyebrow were all pierced. Bolt was pierced in several other places as well, according to club lore, but Tate hadn’t explored those nuances with him.

Not that he hadn’t wanted to, but hell, ruining an entire club for what would potentially be a one-night stand seemed stupid at best. “I’ve had worse,” he told Bolt now.

Bolt snorted. “Right. And you just came here for a drink.”

Tate smiled and picked up the drink. He had more than a few tattoos himself, some from his time in the Marines and others, more recent, including a few on his neck that made his supervisors at the FBI slightly unhappy.

Tate hadn’t bothered to worry about it. “Anyone worth looking at tonight?”

“Always is, Tate.”

Tate rolled his eyes, drained his glass and headed for the backroom, looking for someone to fuck. He really wanted to bring someone home tonight…was in the mood for an unhurried lay to distract him, but he was too on guard for that. So he walked through the backroom, his eyes searching…and felt a handsome down on his shoulder.

If that shit happened anywhere but back here, he’d have the fucker on the floor. But that would be a major buzzkill for his needs, so he turned and saw the shadowed face of a handsome guy with a couple of days of scruff on his cheeks, along with blond hair, streaked lighter in places from the sun, longer and curling at the ends. Messy but clean. Tall. Muscled, but unobtrusive. This man had big, strong hands, a quiet presence and he was only being noticed now because he wanted to be.

_And you’re profiling potential hookups. Again._

Well, fuck it. Better to do so than to screw someone who’d kill him, right?  

Now, Tate smiled. “What’s your name, baby?”

“Craig. But baby works just fine.” A slight drawl, just enough to get Tate hard as Craig tugged him over toward an empty space along the wall. At first, he leaned his back against it to face him, and Tate moved in close so their bodies pressed. Craig was slightly shorter than he was and Tate leaned in and nipped the skin next to his collarbone.

Craig groaned against his ear. Tate took that opportunity to unbutton and unzip the guy’s cargo pants and yank them down. His own cock was rock hard and he wasn’t in the mood for small talk or foreplay.

As if he knew, Craig grinned and turned, his ass facing Tate. Tate freed his own cock and grabbed for the condom and small packet of lube he’d tucked into his pocket before coming into the bar.

Craig glanced over his shoulder. “I could do that for you.”

“You’re definitely going to do things for me,” Tate promised him. He covered his cock and then lubed his fingers, pressing one inside of Craig as he suckled the side of his neck. “Fuck, you’re tight.”

Craig’s only answer was an open-mouthed moan, especially when Tate added a second finger and brushed his gland. The man was up on his toes, then came down on Tate’s fingers, fucking himself.

“Greedy,” Tate murmured against his ear, one hand on Craig’s hip so he was forced to stand still and take whatever Tate gave him. Craig grunted his frustration but remained still, letting

Tate’s fingers open him up as he leaned in and licked the side of Craig’s face, tasting salt and man and fuck, he was sweating too as his cock swayed heavily.

“Fucking tease,” Craig bit out as Tate brought a hand up to skim under his tee-shirt, along his bare chest in order to pinch one nipple and then the other.

“You don’t like that, baby?” Tate shifted, pulled his fingers away and rubbed his cock along the seam of Craig’s ass, rutting him, but not before dropping his hand to circle Craig’s cock, to protect it from rubbing against the wall as he pressed.

“Fuck yeah.”

Tate eased his dick inside of Craig, heard his breath catch at the intrusion and yeah, this was the best part, taking him for the ride along that pain / pleasure line. Halfway in, Tate flexed his hips so he bottomed out, his balls pressed to the man’s ass and Craig groaned and pressed his forehead to his forearm propping him up. “C’mon man, just fuck me.”

“You’re not in a position to give orders,” Tate told him, bit his shoulder again through his cotton tee and then grabbed the man’s hips. “Yeah, baby—you’re tight as hell.”

Craig wasn’t saying anything, just breathing hard, his cock dripping precome onto Tate’s hand. Tate palmed his cock harder now, began to drag his hand over the smooth, pulsing skin faster.

“Fucking finally,” Craig gasped as his hips began to rock rhythmically in time with Tate’s thrusts. And Tate wanted to ride this out for as long as possible, to have Craig finish and then take him into the back part of the back room and do unspeakable things to him—with him…

And then his phone buzzed in his pocket, a persistent tone that signaled work.

Fuck. He picked up the pace, a hand on Craig’s hips to control the fuck. “Gonna come, baby? Want you to do it now.”

He leaned back and slapped Craig’s ass several times before picking the rhythm back up and yes, that was definitely something Craig enjoyed, because his come was spilling into Tate’s hand, on the wall and onto his bare belly, since he’d lifted his shirt.

It only took a few more pumps of his own hips before Tate was spilling into the condom, filling it, his dick pulsing as it emptied. He leaned his face against Craig’s shoulder and breathed the man in as his legs went trembly.

Yeah, just what he’d needed.

Slowly, he backed away—and out of Craig, even as the man protested the loss with a long groan that made Tate's dick twitch. Craig turned and tugged Tate’s head toward him for a kiss and that kiss turned nuclear in seconds. Tate bit Craig’s bottom lip lightly, sucked it in and when he released it, Craig pulled back.

And smiled. “Nice.”

“Glad you liked it, baby. Gotta run.”

Craig nodded, said, “See ya around,” and turned away to grab some tissues to wipe himself clean.

Tate disposed of the condom, zipped up and walked out with a quick wave to Bolt along the way.

It was only afterwards, once he was in his car driving to the BAU, that Tate realized Craig hadn’t asked him his name.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an Original Work, inspired by the TV show, Criminal Minds. It's a work in progress of mm romantic suspense and will have an HEA when complete (probably after 20 chapters or so). 
> 
> To read more of my published word, visit www.sejakes.com
> 
> Property of SE Jakes, copyright 2018 - please do not distribute or reproduce without permission


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